


Stayed on as an epithet

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Bandom, Empires, Gold Motel, Panic At The Disco, The Hush Sound, Young Veins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago stops feeling like home to Tom a long time before he leaves it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stayed on as an epithet

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to verbyna for an amazing last minute beta/pep talk and to the no_tag mods for running the challenge.

 

 

Chicago stops feeling like home to Tom a long time before he leaves it. It doesn’t make sense to him. But then again, nothing ever really has. Because it doesn’t matter all that much in the scheme of things, he continue doing what he does until towards the tail end of winter, when he is evicted.

Jon offers his spare room. “No one is using it anymore.”

No one has used it in a while. That’s not the point though. Tom gets that. He does.

Together they go out drinking, and in the morning Tom wakes up naked in Sean’s bed. When he showers, he notices bruises on his knees and feels the ache in his bones. Sean doesn’t look at him any differently though. But he never does.

 

 

Due to a number of reasons, Tom doesn’t get his bond back.

“You can still move in with me,” Jon reminds him, and Tom could. He doesn’t really want to, though.

Instead he couch surfs for a while. It isn’t that different from what he always did growing up.

He hears through the grape vine that TAI… is having problems.

“No one can play troubadour forever,” Butcher says when they run into each other at one of Nick’s things.

Tom thinks Butcher never really tried. Then again, Tom didn’t either.

The next morning he wakes up hung over. The bruises are fading though. Idly he pokes at one while he waits for Nick to make them coffee.

“I’m thinking about moving,” he tells Nick.

Nick looks at him. “Where?”

Tom shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Nick is quiet.

Tom wonders if he should try again. He doesn’t though. Instead he asks Nick if he can borrow his car and when his mother calls, he tells her he’s driving. She doesn’t ask him where.

“I’ll be back soon,” he tells her anyway.

 

 

On the familiar freeway out of Chicago, he thinks of being a teenager and how he and his friends had eaten up miles and spent their heart out at shows and how it had all felt. He isn’t a teenager anymore. None of his friends are, not even Pete’s lastest girlfriend.

When he stops being able recognise the scenery, he pulls over.

 

 

In an old weatherboard farm house that Tom rents by the month, he begins to work at night. At least that’s what he thinks about saying on the off chance someone asks why the lights are always left on. No one does. Maybe people know better. Maybe they just don’t care. It’s better that way. He’s only been in town for half a year, but the people here are smarter than everyone in Chicago combined.

Jon calls occasionally.

Tom can’t decide if he likes or dislikes that.

Over breakfast, Tom debates the wisdom of calling him back. In the end he gives up and instead heads out into town. At the local post office he packages and mails off the print he sold online over the last week. Greta smiles when he buys stamps from her.

Tapping the cardboard tube with one glittery gold and green nail, she asks what’s inside.

“Are you allowed to ask that?”

Greta makes a face at him. “Yes.”

He gets the feeling she finds him amusing. He also suspects she peeks into his mail when he isn’t around. But as of yet, he can’t prove either.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You want to speak to the manager?”

The manager is seventy eight years old and Greta’s Great Aunt Elspeth. Tom does not want to speak to her.

“I didn’t think so,” Greta says.

 

 

Just over eight hundred people live in Gardiner, Montana. In the summer months that number balloons into the thousands when people arrive in droves to visit the Yellowstone National Park. Greta tells Tom it’s exciting. He thinks he’ll be gone by then.

 

 

Greta works two different jobs. Tom knows this because they are neighbours and occasionally she comes over with cakes her Grandmother bakes for him. Depending on the day of the week, she will arrive in a neat postal uniform, or in worn out jeans and steel-toed boots that are well suited for the farm work she does on the Scalpeter property.

Over the summer she explains that she picks up a third job at the park as a nature guide. She tells him she hardly has any time to herself in the summer.

It’s raining by the time she glances at her watch and realises she’s running late.

“Shit,” she swears.

It startles Tom.

She hadn’t struck him as the sort of person to use that sort of language, which in retrospect is stupid because everyone uses that sort of language.

She has backed out of the drive and is gone before Tom remembers to raise his hand to wave goodbye.

 

 

Tom makes an okay living off his photography.

Or thanks to the images he took of William and Pete and their various bands, Tom made an okay living.

The roads to the parks are closed, but sometimes he walks over to the old Salpeter property and takes landscape shots from the bluff at the edge of their holding. They sell okay. Jon says people are pretty into them back home. When they talk, Jon mentions that in particular. Tom would like it more if the people back home were buying his work. But that’s just his opinion.

Salpeters don’t mind him wandering about their property.

Sometimes he follows fence lines until he tires. Once he sees Greta out on horseback with a few dogs.

“Elspeth wanted me to find you,” she tells him looking down at him, a few golden strands poking out from under her helmet. “Wolves have been spotted two farms north.”

“I haven’t seen any,” he says because he hasn’t.

“You wouldn’t want to.”

 

 

Over dinner Greta’s grandmother and Great Aunt tell him how the country is untamed and how the dark is dangerous up here. It is late by the time Greta makes them all coffee on the old wood fire stove. In the distance he hears howls.

“I thought they were feral dogs.”

The three Salpeter women shake their heads in unison.

“No, my sweet boy,” Greta’s Grandmother corrects. “Those are wolves.”

Elspeth stands and helps Greta serve desert.

All the Salpeter women look similar. Their faces are soft and round, and they wear their hair long. From the framed photographs on the mantle, Tom can tell Greta’s mother looks the same too. Apparently she and Greta’s father moved off the farm a while ago. With them gone, most of the work involved in operating the property falls upon Greta’s shoulders. Once they used to keep large herds of cattle. They’ve been forced to downsize since then.

“Eventually we’ll probably have to sell up,” Greta says after her Grandmother and Great Aunt have retired for the evening.

“What will you do then?”

Greta shrugs. “I don’t really want to do anything but this.”

 

 

He sleeps on their couch that night.

Chicago has never felt further away.

 

 

In the morning Greta drives him home.

“Is it only the three of you up there?” he asks as she pulls into the driveway.

She pulls the emergency break up and turns off the engine. “Yeah. My boyfriend Darren used to live with us too, but he moved cross country last fall.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone does.”

“You haven’t.”

“I don't want to. Grandma and Elspeth need me,” Greta tells him. “Family is family.”

He is who he is. That’s the part that messes things up.

 

 

In the first week of spring, Spencer drives up Tom’s driveway.

“I’m heading home,” he says when Tom opens his door.

“You’re a few states off-course,” Tom tells him and they are.

Spencer doesn’t say anything.

There are things unsaid between them but Tom’s never been any good at reading between the lines. Behind Spencer, Tom catches sight of a familiar dark-haired guy in a rumpled shirt getting out of the passengers seat. Stretching his arms above his head, he yawns loudly.

“You remember Ryan.”

“I remember,” Tom says archly, because he does.

Spencer shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”

 

 

Every second photograph Jon took used to be of Spencer.

When they broke up, Tom helped him burn the negatives.

 

 

They take the guest room. There aren’t any extra blankets. Tom has them all on his bed. When he goes into town, he tells Greta. She lets him come into the back of the post office and sit in the break room.

“Jon really loved Spencer.”

Jon did.

For as long as Tom could remember it was Jon and Spencer until it wasn’t, until it was Spencer moving out and Ryan – some guy who apparently was a childhood friend but no one had ever heard of until he turned up in Chicago a week after Spencer and Jon’s break up – picked Spencer up on the rebound.

“I hate him,” Tom tells her, and even though it isn’t true it feels good to say it.

“He’s your friend,” Greta says.

Tom shakes his head.

“Oh, Tommy,” Greta sighs.

 

 

She drives him back after work and promises to come by with extra bedding. An hour later she does. She also brings a fresh loaf of bread and a pot of left over deer stew her Grandmother made earlier in the week. She serves it on mismatched plates and smiles with Ryan tells her it reminds him of being in Eastern Europe.

Up close Ryan looks too skinny and like he’s coming down from something. Tom doesn’t understand why Spencer chose him over Jon.

Greta does most of the talking over dinner. She wants to know everything and isn’t daunted by Spencer’s cool reticence or Ryan’s pretentious answers. After a while Ryan relaxes and they talk about nature and about the history of some of the local sights Ryan and Spencer saw on their drive. It’s off season for most of the attractions, so the majority were closed, but Greta’s enthusiasm is catching and Ryan listens intently to the things she tells him.

“Is Greta your girl?” Ryan asks later.

Tom hasn’t ever thought about it.

 

 

In the morning Tom is making scrambled eggs and bacon on the old stove when he sees Ryan out in the long grass. Barefoot and wearing only a thin cotton undershirt, he blinks when Tom calls his name.

“I wasn’t thinking,” he says when he reaches the porch.

Tom doesn’t know if Ryan ever does.

“How long are you staying?” Tom asks when they’re back inside and Ryan has warmed up.

“Not long.”

It isn’t really an answer though. Not to Tom’s ears.

Spencer sleeps until noon and when Tom walks past the guest room to his studio he sees Ryan sitting beside Spencer, gently smoothing his dark blonde hair away from his face.

“We need to get going,” Spencer says but Ryan shushes him.

“Tomorrow,” he replies. “We’ll get an early start.”

 

 

In the evening Spencer gets up. In the low light he looks frailer than Tom would have ever associated Spencer being.

“Is Spencer sick?” Tom asks Ryan.

Ryan stares at him blankly. “Fuck, you really are out of the loop.”

Tom doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Ryan sighs. “No. Spencer isn’t sick, you fuckwad.”

 

 

Long after they all turn in for the night, Tom wonders if Ryan meant that someone else was.

 

 

Before Spencer and Ryan leave, Tom pulls Spencer aside because he thinks he has to, because he thinks he can’t not.

“You really fucked Jon up when you left him,” Tom tells him straight up.

Spencer stares at him. “Is that really what you want to talk about?”

Spencer’s tone is disarming and Tom hates that (hates that he forgot Spencer could do that), but after a beat, Spencer shake his head. “Is that what Jon told you?”

“Jon didn’t have to tell me anything,” Tom tells him because Tom was there, Tom drank the dredges of the liquor bottles so that Jon wouldn’t, pushed him into the shower after Jon had spent a week catatonic in bed and changed his sheets and told him it would be okay even though Tom wasn’t sure if he was lying or telling the truth. That’s what friends did. That’s what Jon once did for Tom.

“Jon broke up with me.”

Tom –

“I did love Jon,” Spencer sighs, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “I know you don’t think that, but I did.”

Tom doesn’t understand.

It was always Jon and Spencer. It was always them. It was always the three of them; Jon and Spencer and Tom. They were his two best friends.

“Sometimes things just don’t work.”

Tom opens his mouth to speak, to say something, but finds he cannot.

Behind them Ryan is standing by the car looking awkward. He isn’t much to look at, Tom thinks.

“So Ryan?”

Spencer nods. “Yeah.”

 

 

After they leave Tom calls Jon.

Jon doesn’t say much.

When Tom says goodbye, he thinks about calling William for old time’s sake. They don’t have anything to talk about though.

Spencer is right. Sometimes things just don’t work out.

 

 

“Are your friends gone?” Greta asks when Tom drops by the post office.

Tom nods. “They left this morning.”

Taking the water bill from him, she scans in the barcode. He watches her type something into the computer. According to the grocer, at one time Greta was going to go and study music. That’s was years ago though. It’s ironic. Even after everything his type is the same as it was when he was sixteen and stupidly causing trouble in TAI…

“When do you finish work?” he asks her.

“Not for a while.”

There are seven people waiting in line. Rush hour, Tom supposes.

“Could you drive me home?” he asks.

“I guess so,” she offers. “Did you walk into town again?”

Tom nods. His car stopped starting a month back.

“You know Elspeth will drive you if you call and ask.”

“I know,” he says, because he does. He just doesn’t find the prosect of sitting in an enclosed space with the Salpeter matriarch all that appealing.

She smiles at him fondly as if she knows this.

“You need to fix your car.”

“I do,” Tom agrees.

 

 

On the drive out of town Tom wonders what Gardiner is like in summer. It’s spring now, but it still feels like winter. Greta shakes her head when he tells her.

“Haven’t you noticed the new grass shooting up?” she asks.

He turns and looks at her. He hasn’t.

She laughs a little. “You need to take a closer look at those photos of yours.”

With the heater cranked up to full and the top button of her sheepskin jacket undone, she is probably right. He wonders what Ryan saw between them. Ryan doesn’t know either of them, but he must have seen something. Why would he have said so if he hadn’t?

“Do you want to have dinner at my place?” he asks her, curious to know if she would.

“Sure,” she says, and said like that it sounds simple.

Maybe it is for her. The thought warms Tom.

 

 

When summer finally comes, Tom is there to see it.

 

 


End file.
